Dhamnar
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Ghadi Waley Baba
Mar 20 2015
Time temple: Here, praying is like clockwork
In the opium belt of Madhya Pradesh, where poppy is offered to gods for safe transit of contraband, there's a small temple in Mandsaur that resonates not with the sound of bells, but the tick-tock of clocks. Thousands of clocks hang on the walls of this temple, put up there by devotees whose wishes have been fulfilled. The temple in Dhamnar village is about 25km from Mandsaur district headquarters. Its caretaker -`Ghadi Waley Baba' -presides over the cacophony of over 1,000 timepieces.
“Several clocks get damaged by the vagaries of time and nature as devotees hang them from branches of the banyan tree below which the deity is placed,“ says Kamlesh Patel, the caretaker .“The trend of offering clocks be gan some 10 years ago when prayers of some devotees were answered.Since then villagers turned this into a ritual,“ he said. “There is nobody to guard the clocks, nor are they locked away at night. But not a single piece has ever been stolen. Of course, some broken clocks have been disposed of,“ said Patel.
The temple is popular not just among opium farmers, but also politicians, who offer timepieces before elections.
“Our family wanted to a dig a well, but we were not getting an appropriate location. After we prayed at this temple, we got our wish,“ said Pawan Das Vaishnav, a villager, who made an offering of a new clock at the temple.
Interestingly, many clocks are offered by kin of alcohol addicts.“Family members of alcoholics offer clocks once their kin quits the habit,“ says Patel.
